With bona-fide critics hailing Laughton's "Rembrandt" as a satisfying sequal to his jobs with the notorious Tudor monarch and the "Mutiny on the Bounty", and with the local half-shell philosopher disagreeing with editorial policy, as is his prerogative, and damning it as a fraud and a delusion, the spectator has no where to turn. For certainly "Rembrandt" is not a great picture. Laughton, overimpressed with his own impressiveness, talks in a whisper that makes flesh creep, while the whole theme of the artist's life seems too simple for him and yet too deep, and it evades the hand of the actor as a consequence. Nevertheless, with fine support from Gertrude Lawrence and Elsa Lanchester, the picture does give an idea of the tragedy of Remrandt's life and an insight into the contemporary artistic scene. If nothing else, it might at least stimulate a trip to Fogg to find out about the man.

Completing the bill is a piece called "Hideaway Girl", which has no right to be amusing, though once in a while it is. The plot, strung together like an united shoestring, concern a girl (Shirley Ross) who pinches pearls at a wedding, eludes the police, picks up a playboy (Robert Cummings) at a filling station, goes to a party at an idealized Seawanbaka yacht club, and winds up, after a good deal of dance and Provencal song, spending the night with him on his toy steamboat. This boat, a fascinating streamlined creature, rather like a cross between the Normandic and the San Francisco- Oakland ferry, carries a well stocked cellar, and gives more pleasure than any of the flesh and blood actors. But altogether the program provides disvertissement, and Rembrandt a little food for thought.